Description:
Shrubs or small trees. Leaves opposite, petiolate; blades lanceolate to ovate or oblong-elliptic, often curved; stipules ovate or ovate-triangular, divided into 3-5 lobes. Flowers bisexual, heterostylous, (4)5-merous, in terminal corymbs; bracts small or minute. Calyx: tube campanulate, limb cupular, unequally 5-7-toothed. Corolla white, yellowish or tinged red, salver-shaped, tomentose to woolly outside; tube with throat and sometimes upper half inside densely barbate with white hairs; lobes lanceolate, hairy outside, glabrous inside. Stamens arising at top of corolla tube, exserted or included. Disc mostly glabrous. Ovary 4-10-locular, each locule with 2(3) collateral, erect, anatropous ovules; style filiform, glabrous, exserted or included; stigma lobes 4-10, filiform, straight or twisted, sometimes cohering. Fruits usually red, globose or depressed-globose, drupaceous, containing a woody or bony 4-10-celled putamen, entire or slightly to deeply incised between locules; locules 1-seeded. Seeds ellipsoid, compressed, with membranous testa and fleshy albumen.
Distribution:
Species +/- 10, trop. Africa and islands E of Africa; sthn trop. Afr. 2, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique.
Source:
SSTA
Classification:
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